Take a peek onto “Miss Bala,” Mexican movie competing in Cannes. The movie is loosely based on the life of Laura Zúñiga, a beauty queen who gets caught up in Mexico’s drug war.

Directed by Gerardo Naranjo, whose film “Drama/Mex” was featured in the critic’s week at 2006 Cannes to great acclaim, “Miss Bala” tells the story of a young woman who dreams of being a beauty queen, in a territory dominated by drug-lords.

Newcomers Stephanie Sigman and Noe Hernández star, next to Irene Azuela, James Russo and José Yenque.

“Miss Bala” was filmed over six weeks in Mexico, mainly in the northwestern border city of Tijuana and the central state of Aguascalientes.

The film stars professional model Stephanie Sigman and is produced by Canana Productions – owned by actors Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal – in collaboration with FOX International Productions.

It received support from the Mexican government via the Mexican Film Institute, the National Council for Culture and the Arts and the Investment and Support Fund for the Mexican Film Industry, or Fidecine.

Guanajuato born Naranjo said that despite the fact that certain situations and themes present in the film mirror the life of Laura Zuñiga Huizar, “Miss Bala” is a work of fiction.

“It mirrors what I feel when I see the news,” Naranjo says. “I don’t know the story of Laura, and that’s why the movie doesn’t contain her personal data. It is simply that the metaphor of a character that becomes a criminal’s pet was more than enough to create a whole story revolving around the ideas I had about fraternity among Mexicans, about how we don’t have this idea of society, and how we are abandoning one another, we don’t help each other, and well, every one it’s on its own” he added.